As the world’s best known secret agent notches up a half century, Mark
Monahan is stirred by a new Bond exhibition.

Not even a man of Ian Fleming’s titanic self-confidence could have imagined the commercial success, or the global impact, that his creation James Bond would have. Fleming’s own books were, of course, immensely successful, all 14 of them pretty much required reading for hip young things during the Fifties and Sixties. And Bond continues to have a lively post-Fleming existence on the printed page, having starred in at least as many tales again, written by novelists from John Gardner to Sebastian Faulks.

But it was the Bond movies that lifted the British so-called secret agent into an entirely different league (even if he is in fact, when you come to think of it, an assassin – he never meets a baddy he doesn’t kill). Adjusted for inflation, the 22-strong franchise has so far grossed more than $12 billion dollars, with (depending on whom you talk to) an estimated two-to-three billion people believed to have seen at least one Bond movie at some point in their lives. Ever since Sean Connery’s coolly predatory introduction in 1962’s Dr No, he has been the man every man wants to be, every woman wants to bed, and his cars, clothes, gadgets, catch-phrases and adventures are now indelible parts of our cultural fabric.

It is this, a near-unbelievable half-century on, that a forthcoming exhibition at the Barbican Centre in central London is celebrating. Opening in July (and also anticipating the 23rd Bond film, Skyfall, which goes on release in the autumn) Designing 007 – Fifty Years of Bond Style is aiming to explore, over six sound-and-vision-packed rooms, the craft that went onto making 007 the most seductive screen character in history.

And so, with unprecedented access to the archives of Eon, the production company behind all 23 movies, the Barbican’s co-curators on the project Bronwyn Cosgrave and Oscar-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming have unearthed a welter of original outfits, trinkets, models, macquettes, photographs, storyboards and even cars in a quest to stir memories of – and shed fresh light on – the screen 007. To take a small handful of examples, there will be the actual bikini that Ursula Andress wore in Dr No, as well as Daniel Craig’s similarly skimpy briefs in 2006’s Casino Royale; the actual, surprisingly hefty model of Zorin’s airship that Bond tethered to the Golden Gate Bridge in A View to a Kill (1985), along with Bond’s famously exploding briefcase, Christopher Lee’s similarly lethal Golden Gun, and even 7ft 2in killer Jaws’s metal teeth. All that, and entirely original designer dresses and dinner-suits from the films, of a quantity and quality that would make Milan Fashion Week look dowdy by comparison – plus, a certain DB5, in all its silvery glory.

The rooms themselves sound fun, too. Having walked in through a giant gun-barrell (what else?) you will be able to take a peek into M’s office, saunter through a casino (complete with every last piece of Bondish detail) and, in the “Ice Palace”, explore Bond’s noted fondness for winter sports. And there also promises to be plenty of smaller, quirkier exhibits, from a hilarious photograph of the battalion of fluffy white cats used in making Diamonds Are Forever (1971) to the impeccably faked passport that Daniel Craig was given, along with false Amex and BA privilege card, to help him get into character. (This, incidentally, has 007’s birth date as April 13, 1968 – didn’t you always suspect Craig’s Bond was an Aries?)

When I meet Cosgrave – a fashion historian in her day-job – she is in the middle of the formidable task of writing the labels for the entire exhibition, and is full of little nuggets of information on the series. I never knew, for example, that Fleming himself designed a cover for From Russia with Love; that arch villain Sanchez, in 1989’s Licence to Kill was inspired by the Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega; or that, in the run-up to Goldfinger (1964), Aston Martin were initially reluctant to let designer Ken Adam and co tinker around with one of their precious vehicles – what self-respecting high-end car manufacturer at the time could countenance that?

With Bond these days such a globally recognised byword for style (and cinematic product-placement such big business across the board), one struggles to imagine a time when any sort of luxury-goods manufacturer would not leap at the chance to be associated with 007. But then, after all, hard as it is to believe that Bond has now been on cinema screens for 50 years, it is harder still to imagine a world without him.

Designing 007 – Fifty Years of Bond Style will be at the Barbican Centre, London EC2, from July 6. Details: barbican.org.uk